The first day’s riding turned out to be a bit of a culture shock as I’ve hardly been able to set a wheel off the tarmac at home since Kirroughtree with all the rain we’ve had and I quickly realised that out here you need to be paying a lot more attention to what you’re doing than I’ve been used to of late!

I didn’t opt for leg and arm body armour as I’ve never worn it before but it was available if you wanted it and I guess that wearing it might give you a bit more confidence and also cut down on potential scrapes and bruises. Even though I never thought I would ever be in the position to be contemplating it I’m thinking that it might actually be a good idea to try it out for trail riding so I’m putting this on my list of new things to try for the winter.

Ian and Kate kept a watchful eye on what we were all doing to make sure that everyone had the option to ride great trails that would challenge rather than terrify although I do confess to shutting my eyes and hoping for the best on a couple of occasions. There was some initial switchback practice (after all this area is supposed to be switchback heaven!) and the next day it was pretty obvious why we needed it! That leads me nicely on to the Benque Ridge day.








I was actually quite oblivious to the sheer terror that lay ahead as I was too busy enjoying the awesome climbing but when we topped out and paused at a flattish meadow area I quickly realised that there was rather a long drop down to where we were headed back to. Gulp! Well what can I say; it was all a bit of a blur of seemingly endless narrow tight loose switchbacks (and cowpats) but in fact despite my severe attack of vertigo I realised afterwards that it wouldn’t actually hurt that much if you toppled off so in hindsight it was simply having the conviction to go for it and I’m sure that on a second go it wouldn’t be quite so daunting.







Absolute highlight of the week for me though was the Super Bagneres day as we were blessed with some fabulous weather, which you really do need to totally do this ride justice.

I absolutely loved the long big climb to the top and I was actually quite sad when it was over but the awesome 360-degree views were worth pausing to take in and I found that I was actually in desperate need of calories by then with one of Russ’ famous baguettes quite nicely doing the trick. The journey down was equally awesome and quite challenging for me but I actually managed to ride so much more than I would have done even at the start of the week so the benefits of getting on this terrain every day were easy to see.

The next day was a do-your-own-thing day so we decided to firstly peruse the market in Luchon (definitely recommended if you love cheese and cake) and then swap tyres and bag the road climb up to the Peyresourde. It was roasting hot with the last switchbacks looking well steep from below (but actually weren’t that bad) - I’m now seriously starting to worry about how much I actually love doing these big road climbs given that I don’t even have a road bike!!!!!

Our final day had some mixed weather so we weren’t quite able to make it to the lonely tree but Kate still managed to find plenty of fun trails to make up for it and it was yet another day where I was dreaming of Russ’ cake all afternoon. Sadly in the end we had to leave a day early, as when we contacted the Channel Tunnel they couldn’t guarantee that we would actually get back to the UK on the day we had booked. It wasn’t too bad in the end with just a four-hour wait as I suppose it could have been a lot worse. I didn’t really mind in the end as my legs were starting to feel the terrain and we had plenty of good memories to take away with us.

So how would I summarise our first trip to the Pyrenees? On the basis that if you wanted to you could ride till you dropped then I think this little photo might do nicely!!!!!!!